Hobbes' theory of the state is based on natural principles, i.e. everybody's search for security and peace. The eternally valid rules of peaceful coexistence between men - the natural laws - are even binding on the sovereign, Hobbes maintains. I intend to show that, though there is no doubt in Hobbes' assertion of natural law, the definition of civil law, i.e. the sovereign's will, is not affected by this fact. Hobbes' belief, that the sovereign - carrying out his task to (...) guarantee peace - will in most cases respect the laws of nature, although he can in no way be obliged to do so in terms of civil law, is said to be unconvincing. I argue, that it can be explained with regard to the sovereign's situation, which, unlike the naturale state, is one of complete security. This means that war as a result of the endless search for more power is, in Hobbes' view, unnecessary for an absolute monarch. (shrink)

Unlike sonographic examinations, sonic fetal heartbeat monitoring has received relatively little attention from scholars in the social sciences. Using the case of fetal heartbeat monitoring as part of midwifery prenatal care in Germany, this contribution introduces music as an analytical tool for exploring the aesthetic dimensions of obstetrical surveillance practices. Based on ethnographic stories, three orchestrations are compared in which three different instruments help audiences to listen to what becomes fetal heartbeat music and to qualify fetal and pregnant lives in (...) relation to each other. In the Doppler-based orchestration, audible heartbeat music is taken as a sign of a child in need of parental love and care cultivated to listen. The Pinard horn makes esoteric fetal music that can be appreciated by the midwife as a skilled instrumentalist alone and helps to enact a child hidden in the belly. The cardiotocograph brings about soothing music and a reassuring relationship with a child but also durable scripts of juridical beauty. This material-semiotic analysis amplifies how well-being is shaped in midwifery prenatal care practices. (shrink)

Nicht erst die moderne Philosophie hat die fundamentale Doppelnatur des Körperlichen erkannt, das einerseits diejenigen Gegenstände auszeichnet, die wir mit größtmöglicher Distanz und Objektivität wissenschaftlich untersuchen, das sich uns andererseits und zuallererst aber auch in der Form des jeweils eigenen, in seiner Integrität stets bedrohten und letztlich dem Zerfall ausgelieferten Körpers aufdrängt als Bedingung, an der unsere eigene Existenz durch und durch hängt. Schon die Denker der Antike arbeiten sich an dieser Problematik ab; und es gilt, die gedanklichen Ressourcen nutzbar (...) zu machen, die sie für uns bereithalten. Die in diesem Band versammelten Beiträge spiegeln die antike Auseinandersetzung um den Körper und das Körperliche in all ihren Dimensionen und Schattierungen wieder. Gleichzeitig machen sie deutlich, dass diese Auseinandersetzungen nur geführt werden konnten vor dem Hintergrund einer althergebrachten und für lange Zeit sehr wirkmächtigen Tendenz, Organismen wie die Menschen als paradigmatische körperliche Wesen aufzufassen und dieses Paradigma zum Ausgangspunkt für Reflexionen über das Körperliche als solches zu nehmen. Im ersten Teil des Bandes geht es um das antike Nachdenken über den lebendigen, insbesondere menschlichen Körper. Im Mittelpunkt steht weniger die wissenschaftliche Beschäftigung mit diesem Körper als vielmehr die existenzielle Situation, in der sich der Mensch als ein körperliches Wesen befindet. Der zweite und dritte Teil behandeln die Frage nach den Möglichkeiten, Bedingungen und Grenzen der wissenschaftlichen Beschreibung von Körpern und ihrem Verhalten bei Platon und in der platonischen Tradition sowie bei Aristoteles und in der aristotelischen Tradition. (shrink)

Since the early Gestaltists there has been a strong interest in the question of how problem solvers get stuck in a mental impasse. A key idea is that the repeated activation of a successful strategy from the past results in a mental set (‘Einstellung’) which determines and constrains the option space to solve a problem. We propose that this phenomenon, which mostly was tested by fairly restricted experiments in the lab, could also be applied to more complex problem constellations and (...) naturalistic decision making. We aim at scrutinizing and reconstructing how a mental set determines the misinterpretation of facts in the field of political decision making and leads in consequence to wrong expectations and an ill-defined problem representation. We will exemplify this psychological mechanism considering a historical example, namely the unexpected stabilization of the Franco regime at the end of World War II and its survival thereafter. A specific focus will be drawn to the significant observation that erroneous expectations were taken as the basis for decisions. This is congruent with the notion that in case of discrepancy between preconceived notions and new information, the former prevails over the new findings. Based on these findings, we suggest a theoretical model for expectation violation in political decision making and develop novel approaches for cognitive empirical research on the mechanisms of expectation violation and its maintenance in political decision making processes. (shrink)

Two decades ago, the introduction of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) sparked enthusiastic reactions. With implicit measures like the IAT, researchers hoped to finally be able to bridge the gap between self-reported attitudes on one hand and behavior on the other. Twenty years of research and several meta-analyses later, however, we have to conclude that neither the IAT nor its derivatives have fulfilled these expectations. Their predictive value for behavioral criteria is weak and their incremental validity over and above self-report (...) measures is negligible. In our review, we present an overview of explanations for these unsatisfactory findings and delineate promising ways forward. Over the years, several reasons for the IAT’s weak predictive validity have been proposed. They point to four potentially problematic features: First, the IAT is by no means a pure measure of individual differences in associations but suffers from extraneous influences like recoding. Hence, the predictive validity of IAT-scores should not be confused with the predictive validity of associations. Second, with the IAT, we usually aim to measure evaluation (“liking”) instead of motivation (“wanting”). Yet, behavior might be determined much more often by the latter than the former. Third, the IAT focuses on measuring associations instead of propositional beliefs and thus taps into a construct that might be too unspecific to account for behavior. Finally, studies on predictive validity are often characterized by a mismatch between predictor and criterion (e.g., while behavior is highly context-specific, the IAT usually takes into account neither situation nor domain). Recent research, however, also revealed advances addressing each of these problems, namely (1) procedural and analytical advances to control for recoding in the IAT, (2) measurement procedures to assess implicit wanting, (3) measurement procedures to assess implicit beliefs, and (4) approaches to increase the fit between implicit measures and behavioral criteria (e.g., by incorporating contextual information). Implicit measures like the IAT hold an enormous potential. In order to allow them to fulfill this potential, however, we have to refine our understanding of these measures, and we should incorporate recent conceptual and methodological advancements. This review provides specific recommendations on how to do so. (shrink)

Our society is in the middle of the AI revolution. We discuss several applications of AI, in particular medical causality, where deep-learning neural networks screen through big data bases, extracting associations between a patient’s condition and possible causes. While beneficial in medicine, several questionable AI trading strategies have emerged in finance. Though advantages in many aspects of our lives, serious threats of AI exist. We suggest several regulatory measures to reduce these threats. We further discuss whether ‘full AI robots’ should (...) be programmed with a virtual consciousness and conscience. While this would reduce AI threats via motivational control, other threats such as the desire for AI—human socioeconomic equality could prove detrimental. (shrink)

In public health research, tracking folk racial categories (in disease risk, etc.) is a double-edged tool. On the one hand, tracking folk racial categories is dangerous because it reinforces a problematic but fairly common belief in biological race essentialism. On the other hand, ignoring racial categories also runs the risk of ignoring very real biological phenomena in which marginalized communities, likely in virtue of their marginalization, are sicker and in need of improved resources. Much of the conversation among epidemiologists and (...) philosophers of medicine concerning the issue of tracking folk racial categories in public health research springs forth from largely black/white binarized health inequities. While health inequities between black and white Americans are certainly a very important topic, I am interested in investigating the complications to this conversation about the potential harms of tracking folk racial categories in public health research generated by the consideration of Indigenous identities in the US—groups whose health inequities are typically tracked based on the folk racial category of “Native American” or “American Indian,” but whose unique identity categories and community membership problematize the current spectrum of approaches to tracking folk racial categories in epidemiologic research. This paper will draw on scholarship by and about Indigenous people in the US context to address an undertheorized facet of the conversations concerning the potential harms of tracking folk racial categories in public health research, including the potential undermining of American Indian sovereignty and Indigenous epistemologies. I will end on some methodological considerations inspired by the inclusion of Indigenous identities in the US in the conversation about tracking folk racial categories in epidemiologic research. (shrink)

Settler colonial imaginaries are constructed through the repeated, intergenerational layering of settler ecologies onto Indigenous ecologies; they result in fortified ignorance of the land, Indigenous peoples, and the networks of relationality and responsibility that sustain co‐flourishing. Kyle Whyte (2018) terms this fortification of settler ignorance vicious sedimentation. In this paper, we argue that Outlaw Country music plays important roles in sedimenting settler imaginaries. We begin by clarifying the epistemic dimensions of vicious sedimentation. We then explore specific cases where Outlaw Country (...) songs function as epistemic scaffolding for maintaining and preserving deeply sedimented settler imaginaries. Finally, we conclude by considering ways of using country music as epistemic scaffolding for constructing resistant epistemologies, through the processes of trickster hermeneutics (Vizenor, 1999) and epistemic chronostratigraphy. (shrink)

This book seeks to resolve an issue that has divided psychoanalysts and other scholars of aggression for decades, namely the nature of aggression. The work expands and unifies the Freudian drive-based explanation of aggression into contemporary psychoanalytic theory and practice and brings Freudian theory into the 21st Century.

This book seeks to resolve an issue that has divided psychoanalysts and other scholars of aggression for decades, namely the nature of aggression. The work expands and unifies the Freudian drive-based explanation of aggression into contemporary psychoanalytic theory and practice and brings Freudian theory into the 21st Century.

Since communication and expression are central aspects of music performance it is important to develop a systematic pedagogy of teaching children and teenagers expressiveness. Although research has been growing in this area a comprehensive literature review that unifies the different approaches to teaching young musicians expressiveness has been lacking. Therefore, the aim of this article is to provide an overview of literature related to teaching and learning of expressiveness from music psychology and music education research in order to build a (...) new theoretical framework for teaching and learning expressive music performance in instrumental music lessons with children and teenagers. The article will start with a brief discussion of interpretation and expression in music performance, before providing an overview of studies that investigated teaching and learning of performance expression in instrumental music education with adults and children. On the foundation of this research a theoretical framework for dialogic teaching and learning of expressive music performance will be proposed and the rationale explained. Dialogic teaching can be useful for scaffolding young musicians’ learning of expressivity as open questions can stimulate thinking about the interpretation and may serve to connect musical ideas to the embodied experience of the learner. A “toolkit” for teaching and learning of expressiveness will be presented for practical application in music lessons. In addition, a theoretical model will be proposed to further our understanding of teaching and learning of expressive music performance as a multifaceted and interactive process that is embedded in the context of tutors’ and learners’ experiences and environment. Finally, implications of this framework and suggestions for future research will be discussed. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the dominance of certain paradigms and theories on policies can have an influence on the value added by impact assessments. A link exists between paradigms and theories and policies and consequently the practices humans develop to tackle real world problems. I also argue that different types of thinking need to be integrated, at least at the scientific level, to enhance our understanding of social phenomena. This in turn can have a positive influence on policy (...) processes that follow impact assessment recommendations. I am not arguing for the adoption of theoretical positions by practitioners, Instead, I contend that if impact assessments are informed by a variety of paradigms and theories, the policy practitioner might have a better understanding of the issue and the moral choices he or she needs to make. I will highlight the connection between theory and policies with practical examples from the social impact assessment of the De Hoop Dam, which was constructed on the Steelpoort River. I also argue for an integration of different theories to give a deeper understanding of real world problems. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn Therapeutic Nations, Dian Million highlights the complicated role that neoliberal arenas like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and international dialogues concerning human rights play in the marginalization of Indigenous communities. Neoliberal arenas are empowered by sociopolitical imaginaries, or a metaphorical moral fabric of a given community, that consist in discursive content and affective, felt knowledge. According to Million, the sociopolitical imaginaries that give weight and context to negative stereotypes about Indigenous peoples are the same sociopolitical imaginaries that empower neoliberal (...) arenas. In a sense, the proposed solutions are ‘cut from the same cloth’ as the causes of settler colonial violence. Million does not directly apply her argument to Indigenous language reclamation, but Million’s conceptions of sociopolitical imaginaries and paradoxically imposed neoliberal arenas are useful for framing a discussion of the potential harms in some Indigenous language reclamation projects, specifically, revitalization programming described by UNESCO and those pursued by U.S. research universities. I aim to show that some of these proposed solutions to Indigenous language loss are cut from the very same cloth, justified by the same sociopolitical imaginaries, as attempted linguicide itself. (shrink)

We present a natural standard translation of inquisitive modal logic $\mathrm{InqML}$ into first-order logic over the natural two-sorted relational representations of the intended models, which captures the built-in higher-order features of $\mathrm{InqML}$. This translation is based on a graded notion of flatness that ties the inherent second-order, team-semantic features of $\mathrm{InqML}$ over information states to subsets or tuples of bounded size. A natural notion of pseudo-models, which relaxes the non-elementary constraints on the intended models, gives rise to an elementary, purely (...) model-theoretic proof of the compactness property for $\mathrm{InqML}$. Moreover, we prove a Hennessy-Milner theorem for $\mathrm{InqML}$, which crucially uses $\omega $ -saturated pseudo-models and the new standard translation. As corollaries we also obtain van Benthem style characterisation theorems. (shrink)

PurposeWith the rise of the internet, the act of sharing copyrighted material has received a lot of attention, culminating in a flood of lawsuits against file‐sharers as well as studies concerning the costs of file‐sharing for the entertainment industry. This paper attempts to judge whether file‐sharing really is an ethically problematic act and, upon achieving this, goes on to propose strategies to avoid file‐sharing and discuss ethical considerations surrounding those distribution alternatives.Design/methodology/approachThe paper limits its discussion to the medium of moving (...) images. It tries to achieve above aims by applying the ethics of Immanuel Kant to the phenomenon of file‐sharing on the internet and borrowing ideas for alternative, file‐sharing avoiding, strategies from practitioners and media commentators and applying Kant's ideas to those.FindingsThe paper argues that file‐sharing cannot, per se, be considered to be unethical. While file‐sharing has positive and negative aspects, the proposed alternative distribution strategies, a one‐stop shop and giving films away for free, seem to avoid the negative implications of file‐sharing while not impeding with its positive facets. The paper concludes that, since the suggested strategies exist but are not yet implemented by the commercial film industry, the moral responsibility for file‐sharing lies with the commercial film industry, not with the individual file‐sharer.Originality/valueThe paper hence adds to the discussions surrounding online files haring by shifting the focus towards the entertainment industry as well as by providing alternative, file‐sharing avoiding, distribution solutions. (shrink)

This article brings together the Rules for Discernment of Spirits from the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola and the avuncular, if diabolical, advice given by C. S Lewis' shrewd and experienced devil, Screwtape, to his fledgling nephew, Wormwood, who is still learning his satanic craft. The juxtaposition of Ignatius' cautions regarding the wiles of the evil spirit with the counterpoise of the recommendations of the crafty old Screwtape for the temptation, beguilement and conquest of souls and the triumph of (...) his evil satanic empire, may serve to deepen if not enrich our appreciation of the factors that draw good souls away from the paths of virtue. To mediate the discussion I have chosen to recast some of these reposts in terms of more contemporary psychoanalytic concepts in an effort to extend the borders of reflection between psychoanalysis and religious perspectives. (shrink)

It is shown that the nonlocal anomalous effective actions corresponding to the quantum breaking of the conformal symmetry can lead to observable modifications of Einstein’s equations. The fact that Einstein’s general relativity is in perfect agreement with all observations including cosmological or recently observed gravitational waves imposes strong restrictions on the field content of possible extensions of Einstein’s theory: all viable theories should have vanishing conformal anomalies. It is shown that a complete cancellation of conformal anomalies in \ for both (...) the \ invariant and the Euler invariant can only be achieved for N-extended supergravity multiplets with \. (shrink)